#only to have lost a lot of content they created and valued because they wanted to punish themselves for trusting a predator

[proudfreakmetarusonniku]

but also like. guys you don’t need to leave the minecraft youtube community bc one person is bad to clarify. like. shelby is a minecraft youtuber. a lot of her friends are minecraft youtubers. those friends are supportive and as far as we know all believe her. the vast majority of minecraft youtubers are like. fine. this shit is something that Happens because Abusers are Manipulative, going to another hobby will Not shield you from anything and you’re not immoral for liking something bad people also liked. which is. one of the biggest video games ever. like in this situation no one was knowingly harbouring an abuser and it seems everyone was supportive. this is just a case of some people being shit, not anything to do with mcyt. hell, the guy hasn’t been on minecraft in like a year lmao.

i fully understand why the content might be uncomfortable to you guys now but like, please don’t self flagellate and cut yourself off from an entire genre of media because of one guy again. i saw that happen after the dream stuff and a lot of people ended up losing important things because they made rash decisions and felt like they Had to leave. but please. take one deep fucking breath. this has happened before. this has happened so much before, and in ways far worse than this. because abusers, unfortunately, exist. you should not feel guilty for being manipulated by a manipulative abuser, don’t blame yourself. do what you have to, but please, please keep in mind that the majority of minecraft youtube is fine. it is fine to continue engaging with it. it’s fine to be manipulated by an abuser and it’s not your fault. please don’t make rash decisions and end up losing things you care deeply about and being unable to get them back. distance yourself all you want, but please be careful to not do so out of emotional self harm from the guilt. that’s something this fandom encourages far too much- even outside of this- and it’s unhealthy and anyone expecting it of you is cruel.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The (open) web is good, actually

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library tonight (Monday, November 13) at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

The great irony of the platformization of the internet is that platforms are intermediaries, and the original promise of the internet that got so many of us excited about it was disintermediation – getting rid of the middlemen that act as gatekeepers between community members, creators and audiences, buyers and sellers, etc.

The platformized internet is ripe for rent seeking: where the platform captures an ever-larger share of the value generated by its users, making the service worst for both, while lock-in stops people from looking elsewhere. Every sector of the modern economy is less competitive, thanks to monopolistic tactics like mergers and acquisitions and predatory pricing. But with tech, the options for making things worse are infinitely divisible, thanks to the flexibility of digital systems, which means that product managers can keep subdividing the Jenga blocks they pulling out of the services we rely on. Combine platforms with monopolies with digital flexibility and you get enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

An enshittified, platformized internet is bad for lots of reasons – it concentrates decisions about who may speak and what may be said into just a few hands; it creates a rich-get-richer dynamic that creates a new oligarchy, with all the corruption and instability that comes with elite capture; it makes life materially worse for workers, users, and communities.

But there are many other ways in which the enshitternet is worse than the old good internet. Today, I want to talk about how the enshitternet affects openness and all that entails. An open internet is one whose workings are transparent (think of "open source"), but it's also an internet founded on access – the ability to know what has gone before, to recall what has been said, and to revisit the context in which it was said.

At last week's Museum Computer Network conference, Aaron Straup Cope gave a talk on museums and technology called "Wishful Thinking – A critical discussion of 'extended reality' technologies in the cultural heritage sector" that beautifully addressed these questions of recall and revisiting:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/#wishful

Cope is a museums technologist who's worked on lots of critical digital projects over the years, and in this talk, he addresses himself to the difference between the excitement of the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector over the possibilities of the web, and why he doesn't feel the same excitement over the metaverse, and its various guises – XR, VR, MR and AR.

The biggest reason to be excited about the web was – and is – the openness of disintermediation. The internet was inspired by the end-to-end principle, the idea that the network's first duty was to transmit data from willing senders to willing receivers, as efficiently and reliably as possible. That principle made it possible for whole swathes of people to connect with one another. As Cope writes, openness "was not, and has never been, a guarantee of a receptive audience or even any audience at all." But because it was "easy and cheap enough to put something on the web," you could "leave it there long enough for others to find it."

That dynamic nurtured an environment where people could have "time to warm up to ideas." This is in sharp contrast to the social media world, where "[anything] not immediately successful or viral … was a waste of time and effort… not worth doing." The social media bias towards a river of content that can't be easily reversed is one in which the only ideas that get to spread are those the algorithm boosts.

This is an important way to understand the role of algorithms in the context of the spread of ideas – that without recall or revisiting, we just don't see stuff, including stuff that might challenge our thinking and change our minds. This is a much more materialistic and grounded way to talk about algorithms and ideas than the idea that Big Data and AI make algorithms so persuasive that they can control our minds:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

As bad as this is in the social media context, it's even worse in the context of apps, which can't be linked into, bookmarked, or archived. All of this made apps an ominous sign right from the beginning:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Apps interact with law in precisely the way that web-pages don't. "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to defend yourself against corporate predation":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

Apps are "closed" in every sense. You can't see what's on an app without installing the app and "agreeing" to its terms of service. You can't reverse-engineer an app (to add a privacy blocker, or to change how it presents information) without risking criminal and civil liability. You can't bookmark anything the app won't let you bookmark, and you can't preserve anything the app won't let you preserve.

Despite being built on the same underlying open frameworks – HTTP, HTML, etc – as the web, apps have the opposite technological viewpoint to the web. Apps' technopolitics are at war with the web's technopolitics. The web is built around recall – the ability to see things, go back to things, save things. The web has the technopolitics of a museum:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2014/09/11/brand/#dconstruct

By comparison, apps have the politics of a product, and most often, that product is a rent-seeking, lock-in-hunting product that wants to take you hostage by holding something you love hostage – your data, perhaps, or your friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

When Anil Dash described "The Web We Lost" in 2012, he was describing a web with the technopolitics of a museum:

where tagging was combined with permissive licenses to make it easy for people to find and reuse each others' stuff;

where it was easy to find out who linked to you in realtime even though most of us were posting to our own sites, which they controlled;

where a link from one site to another meant one person found another person's contribution worthy;

where privacy-invasive bids to capture the web were greeted with outright hostility;

where every service that helped you post things that mattered to you was expected to make it easy for you take that data back if you changed services;

where inlining or referencing material from someone else's site meant following a technical standard, not inking a business-development deal;

https://www.anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

Ten years later, Dash's "broken tech/content culture cycle" described the web we live on now:

https://www.anildash.com/2022/02/09/the-stupid-tech-content-culture-cycle/

found your platform by promising to facilitate your users' growth;

order your technologists and designers to prioritize growth above all other factors and fire anyone who doesn't deliver;

grow without regard to the norms of your platform's users;

plaster over the growth-driven influx of abusive and vile material by assigning it to your "most marginalized, least resourced team";

deliver a half-assed moderation scheme that drives good users off the service and leaves no one behind but griefers, edgelords and trolls;

steadfastly refuse to contemplate why the marginalized users who made your platform attractive before being chased away have all left;

flail about in a panic over illegal content, do deals with large media brands, seize control over your most popular users' output;

"surface great content" by algorithmically promoting things that look like whatever's successful, guaranteeing that nothing new will take hold;

overpay your top performers for exclusivity deals, utterly neglect any pipeline for nurturing new performers;

abuse your creators the same ways that big media companies have for decades, but insist that it's different because you're a tech company;

ignore workers who warn that your product is a danger to society, dismiss them as "millennials" (defined as "anyone born after 1970 or who has a student loan")

when your platform is (inevitably) implicated in a murder, have a "town hall" overseen by a crisis communications firm;

pay the creator who inspired the murder to go exclusive on your platform;

dismiss the murder and fascist rhetoric as "growing pains";

when truly ghastly stuff happens on your platform, give your Trust and Safety team a 5% budget increase;

chase growth based on "emotionally engaging content" without specifying whether the emotions should be positive;

respond to ex-employees' call-outs with transient feelings of guilt followed by dismissals of "cancel culture":

fund your platforms' most toxic users and call it "free speech";

whenever anyone disagrees with any of your decisions, dismiss them as being "anti-free speech";

start increasing how much your platform takes out of your creators' paychecks;

force out internal dissenters, dismiss external critics as being in conspiracy with your corporate rivals;

once regulation becomes inevitable, form a cartel with the other large firms in your sector and insist that the problem is a "bad algorithm";

"claim full victim status," and quit your job, complaining about the toll that running a big platform took on your mental wellbeing.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/18/broken-records/#dashes

The web wasn't inevitable – indeed, it was wildly improbable. Tim Berners Lee's decision to make a new platform that was patent-free, open and transparent was a complete opposite approach to the strategy of the media companies of the day. They were building walled gardens and silos – the dialup equivalent to apps – organized as "branded communities." The way I experienced it, the web succeeded because it was so antithetical to the dominant vision for the future of the internet that the big companies couldn't even be bothered to try to kill it until it was too late.

Companies have been trying to correct that mistake ever since. After three or four attempts to replace the web with various garbage systems all called "MSN," Microsoft moved on to trying to lock the internet inside a proprietary browser. Years later, Facebook had far more success in an attempt to kill HTML with React. And of course, apps have gobbled up so much of the old, good internet.

Which brings us to Cope's views on museums and the metaverse. There's nothing intrinsically proprietary about virtual worlds and all their permutations. VRML is a quarter of a century old – just five years younger than Snow Crash:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

But the current enthusiasm for virtual worlds isn't merely a function of the interesting, cool and fun experiences you can have in them. Rather, it's a bid to kill off whatever is left of the old, good web and put everything inside a walled garden. Facebook's metaverse "is more of the same but with a technical footprint so expensive and so demanding that it all but ensures it will only be within the means of a very few companies to operate."

Facebook's VR headsets have forward-facing cameras, turning every users into a walking surveillance camera. Facebook put those cameras there for "pass through" – so they can paint the screens inside the headset with the scene around you – but "who here believes that Facebook doesn't have other motives for enabling an always-on camera capturing the world around you?"

Apple's VisionPro VR headset is "a near-perfect surveillance device," and "the only thing to save this device is the trust that Apple has marketed its brand on over the last few years." Cope notes that "a brand promise is about as fleeting a guarantee as you can get." I'll go further: Apple is already a surveillance company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The technopolitics of the metaverse are the opposite of the technopolitics of the museum – even moreso than apps. Museums that shift their scarce technology budgets to virtual worlds stand a good chance of making something no one wants to use, and that's the best case scenario. The worst case is that museums make a successful project inside a walled garden, one where recall is subject to corporate whim, and help lure their patrons away from the recall-friendly internet to the captured, intermediated metaverse.

It's true that the early web benefited from a lot of hype, just as the metaverse is enjoying today. But the similarity ends there: the metaverse is designed for enclosure, the web for openness. Recall is a historical force for "the right to assembly… access to basic literacy… a public library." The web was "an unexpected gift with the ability to change the order of things; a gift that merits being protected, preserved and promoted both internally and externally." Museums were right to jump on the web bandwagon, because of its technopolitics. The metaverse, with its very different technopolitics, is hostile to the very idea of museums.

In joining forces with metaverse companies, museums strike a Faustian bargain, "because we believe that these places are where our audiences have gone."

The GLAM sector is devoted to access, to recall, and to revisiting. Unlike the self-style free speech warriors whom Dash calls out for self-serving neglect of their communities, the GLAM sector is about preservation and access, the true heart of free expression. When a handful of giant companies organize all our discourse, the ability to be heard is contingent on pleasing the ever-shifting tastes of the algorithm. This is the problem with the idea that "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach" – if a platform won't let people who want to hear from you see what you have to say, they are indeed compromising freedom of speech:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Likewise, "censorship" is not limited to "things that governments do." As Ada Palmer so wonderfully describes it in her brilliant "Why We Censor: from the Inquisition to the Internet" speech, censorship is like arsenic, with trace elements of it all around us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMJb3AxA0s

A community's decision to ban certain offensive conduct or words on pain of expulsion or sanction is censorship – but not to the same degree that, say, a government ban on expressing certain points of view is. However, there are many kinds of private censorship that rise to the same level as state censorship in their impact on public discourse (think of Moms For Liberty and their book-bannings).

It's not a coincidence that Palmer – a historian – would have views on censorship and free speech that intersect with Cope, a museum worker. One of the most brilliant moments in Palmer's speech is where she describes how censorship under the Inquistion was not state censorship – the Inquisition was a multinational, nongovernmental body that was often in conflict with state power.

Not all intermediaries are bad for speech or access. The "disintermediation" that excited early web boosters was about escaping from otherwise inescapable middlemen – the people who figured out how to control and charge for the things we did with one another.

When I was a kid, I loved the writing of Crad Kilodney, a short story writer who sold his own self-published books on Toronto street-corners while wearing a sign that said "VERY FAMOUS CANADIAN AUTHOR, BUY MY BOOKS" (he also had a sign that read, simply, "MARGARET ATWOOD"). Kilodney was a force of nature, who wrote, edited, typeset, printed, bound, and sold his own books:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-late-street-poet-and-publishing-scourge-crad-kilodney-left-behind-a/

But there are plenty of writers out there that I want to hear from who lack the skill or the will to do all of that. Editors, publishers, distributors, booksellers – all the intermediaries who sit between a writer and their readers – are not bad. They're good, actually. The problem isn't intermediation – it's capture.

For generations, hucksters have conned would-be writers by telling them that publishing won't buy their books because "the gatekeepers" lack the discernment to publish "quality" work. Friends of mine in publishing laughed at the idea that they would deliberately sideline a book they could figure out how to sell – that's just not how it worked.

But today, monopolized film studios are literally annihilating beloved, high-priced, commercially viable works because they are worth slightly more as tax writeoffs than they are as movies:

https://deadline.com/2023/11/coyote-vs-acme-shelved-warner-bros-discovery-writeoff-david-zaslav-1235598676/

There's four giant studios and five giant publishers. Maybe "five" is the magic number and publishing isn't concentrated enough to drop whole novels down the memory hole for a tax deduction, but even so, publishing is trying like hell to shrink to four:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

Even as the entertainment sector is working to both literally and figuratively destroy our libraries, the cultural heritage sector is grappling with preserving these libraries, with shrinking budgets and increased legal threats:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

I keep meeting artists of all description who have been conditioned to be suspicious of anything with the word "open" in its name. One colleague has repeatedly told me that fighting for the "open internet" is a self-defeating rhetorical move that will scare off artists who hear "open" and think "Big Tech ripoff."

But "openness" is a necessary precondition for preservation and access, which are the necessary preconditions for recall and revisiting. Here on the last, melting fragment of the open internet, as tech- and entertainment-barons are seizing control over our attention and charging rent on our ability to talk and think together, openness is our best hope of a new, good internet. T

he cultural heritage sector wants to save our creative works. The entertainment and tech industry want to delete them and take a tax writeoff.

As a working artist, I know which side I'm on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/13/this-is-for-everyone/#revisiting

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Mimara,_Zagreb,_Croacia,_2014-04-20,_DD_01.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[tokiro07]

Undead Unluck ch.204 thoughts

[Lord Forgive Me But It's Time to Go Back to The Old Me]

(Contents: Parallels - Nico/Feng/Ichico, Character development - Feng, Power system development/speculation - Souls, Character speculation - Sun/Luna)

Well! I guess we didn't need to worry about Nico staying a non-Negator after all, now did we? So much for keeping Nico "Unforgettable-free" eh, Ichico? Still, I feel better knowing that my prediction that they'd trigger it on purpose was correct, even if the exact method was a bit off

As usual, Tozuka continues to impress me with his ability to compose iconic panels. Nico's face when he absorbed all of the memories from Acopalypse is simply Unforgettable, particularly since it so immediately reverted him to his classic L100 appearance. What's really fun about that is that it's probably not that his body just suddenly remembered all of the stress and sleepless nights of Unforgettable, but rather it's the logical extreme of Artifact-based memory influx. We've seen characters develop headaches and nosebleeds from it before, most notably from Fuuko digging through an huge box full of Artifacts, so for Nico to absorb presumably ALL of Apocalypse's stored memories (stated to be the most of any Artifact), it makes sense that even the capillaries under his eyes would all burst at once from the pressure

The question now is whether or not this is a permanent change. I imagine not, since his previously haggard appearance was indicative of his suffering, the haunting knowledge that his most sacred memories would soon fade and be permanently replaced with the most wretched. L100 Nico had the opportunity to create new pleasant memories but actively rejected the possibility out of fear of losing the old, while in this world Nico is going to be able to embrace the support of others as he won't have lost Ichico this time. Honestly, no wonder Tozuka waited to introduce Mico to this world; he wanted to make sure Nico would be able to make room for her in his heart rather than keeping her at a distance

I wonder if that's another reason Tozuka chose Feng for this fight; not only is Feng's current focus on making himself unforgettable to future generations, but he's also a good parallel to Nico's role as a father. Both L100 Nico and Feng prevented themselves from properly forming attachments with their children, and L101 has given both of them the chance to make right on that. Shen explicitly acknowledges that he loves Feng as his father, and Feng even calls Shen his son, so while Feng may not be the best or even a good role model for fatherhood, he does make a compelling argument for parental redemption. If Nico really does have complete knowledge of the previous Loops now, the significance of this change won't be lost on him, and he'll be certain to make sure Mico can grow up happy and loved

Speaking of, Ichico's final speech in this chapter remind me a lot of Nico's in L100. She tells Nico that she knows he can save her because he's the first person she's ever loved, while as Nico was dying in L100, Ichico asked if he thought Mico could handle saving Fuuko's life and he replied "she's our daughter. She doesn't make mistakes." Both of them have absolute faith in their loved ones to pull through when the chips are down, and both of them hold each other in extremely high regard. These two really have such strong chemistry, I'm excited to see the sorts of interactions they have now that the cat's out of the bag

Now that I think of it, Nico's refusal to let Mico into his heart was pretty ironic since Ichico explicitly wanted to make sure that Nico wouldn't ever feel alone. Just like Leila asked Rip and Latla to find love in each other, Ichico wanted Nico to fill the void she left with Mico, and just like them, he couldn't let go of the past and move on. Leila and Ichico were also both in poor health and believed that since their lives were short they held less value, and instead sought to leave as much of an impact as possible in the time that they had, even if it was just to make the people closest to them happy

Looking at Ichico in that light, we can see another fun parallel to Feng! Feng's Unfade made him believe that he had all the time in the world and that he didn't need to leave anything behind because he'd always be there, while Ichico's Unsleep made her believe she had no time and had to leave as much behind as she could. Both of them, however, had adverse effects on their families, as Feng believed his children to exist for him to become stronger and Ichico believed her child to be an adequate replacement for herself, when in reality Feng should have focused on raising someone to surpass him and Ichico should have focused on preserving her life to be present for her family. Heck, Unforgettable manifested in Nico both times specifically because he saw Ichico's last moments and thought something to the effect of "I don't want her to die, I want to remember her." Doomed by the narrative, indeed!

Man, I'm so glad Tozuka used Feng here, I had no idea there was so much connective tissue between all these folks! I bet we still would have gotten something cool if it were Tella, but damn this is such juicy stuff!! I hope Tozuka keeps throwing all of his toys together in fun combos that get me to think this deeply in the other Master Rule fights too

Feng's inclusion here also continues to demonstrate how far he's developed, forcing him to put his money where his mouth is and sacrifice himself for someone else for a change. He was a bit incredulous at first that Ichico was suggesting he should die, which is pretty hypocritical coming from the guy who just last chapter said "you should sacrifice your wife to get stronger, it'll be cool." Once he realized that dying would help him understand souls better and that Nico could save him AND bring him back to life, Feng was all for it, and may well come to understand that being with people provides more opportunities for growth than treating them as expendable ever could

I am very interested in seeing how his death will improve his understanding of souls, though. The damage he took from Luna's soul blast as well as the damage he dealt to Sun (who Language stated has a physical body) with his knock-off Kamehameha both prove that souls can directly interact with the physical plane, something that Ghost previously stated couldn't be done. This may be a matter of interpretation, though, as Ghost also stated that Andy only couldn't move his limbs after having those parts of his soul cut off because he believed he could move his body using his soul. Ghost's interpretation was that souls couldn't touch physical matter and vice versa, so only a physical attack coated in soul could harm him by ensuring it didn't matter which form he was in

Luna's attack seems to be pure soul, so by that logic, she shouldn't have been able to deal damage to Feng's body, and yet she did. Is Luna's interpretation that a soul attack damages the soul and reflects its state on the body? Probably not, then one wouldn't be able to detach their soul for attacks in the first place, as that would cause the body to change shape (see Mahito's Idle Transfiguration in JJK). Does Luna interpret souls as having different properties at different concentrations? Is she coating her soul around the air to create physical pressure when launching her attack? Or is it something entirely different? Whatever it turns out to be, I think it will have pretty drastic implications for how battles are fought going forward

Finally, I want to touch on an interesting line from Language. She referred to Luna and Sun as "the Pinnacle of the Spiritual and the Pinnacle the Physical" respectively, and given Luna's hazy silver appearance, it does track that she is literally made of soul, but then does that mean Luna doesn't have a physical body at all? And in fact, if Luna is only a soul, then how did she exist prior to UMA Soul's creation? Is Soul really the Rule that allows souls to exist, or the Rule that allows other souls, existences like Luna, to be?

And if Luna is a soul without a body, then...is Sun a body without a soul? Can soul-based attacks work on Sun, or does the Union need to focus solely on physical attacks? Or, does defeating Sun require that Luna be defeated simultaneously, just like Ghost, because Luna is Sun's soul?

I know I say it all the time, but Tozuka really is following Oda's footsteps incredibly well. They're both so good at sprinkling in hints that make me ask questions rather than just spoonfeeding me answers, so while I desperately want the answers, the time I get to spend chewing them over and looking for them myself makes the questions stick with me and leave that much more of an impact. I sincerely hope that other mangaka are taking notes, cus I want to see so much more of this in Jump's future!

Until next time, let's enjoy life!

[pemprika]

hnk ch. 100 thoughts (spoilers)

Making a full-on separate post because I thought there was a lot to draw from in this recent chapter... I needed to document it, so here is my veryy long thought bubble on hnk 100:

The chapter felt like a depiction of Phos in transition to accepting themself and adapting to a new phase of peace that they hadn’t experienced before. While young Phos had a carefree life, they were perpetually stuck feeling useless, never satisfied with the way they lived, and gradually lost all their friends, selfhood, and purpose.

It’s a little difficult to emotionally match the pacing of the story considering how often the series goes on hiatus now, but note that Phos had only recently come to terms with their own flaws and the reasons why everything ended up the way it did. They had a wish to be happy, and meeting these lifeforms allowed them to realize the meaning of their existence and be more content with it.

That poetic verse was introspective and contemplative. Rather than placing worth based on certain levels, like the gems’ hardness levels or Lunarians’ caste system, these rudimentary rocks perceive that all life is made equal. For thousands of years, gems tied their own value to a designated role, and if they couldn’t fulfill it, they devalued their existence. We saw a lot of perspectives throughout Phos’ journey, including how Rutile “failed” as a doctor for being unable to fix Padapradscha on their own, or how Dia “failed'' to live up as a diamond with refined fighting skills compared to their rivaled counterpart. Again, these are just flawed traits passed down from their human predecessors and the curse of immortality.

The chapter ending conveyed a hopeful conception that all things, primitive or refined, come from the same place (nature). I struggled to connect the details mentioned in ch 97 before, but it gave us sooo much foreshadowing to this new world. Dr. Ayumu said that, “the inorganic things that we had been using for ourselves will soon have a world of their own'', alluding that these little guys that Phos met are the new world.

 Interesting how Dr. Ayumu wanted Adamant to “build the bridge” and Phos to “burn the bridge” in order to create this “beautiful, rational world” to be a more freeing and less destructive place, and refresh the Earth to avoid relying on human values and qualities to stay self-fulfilled.

I was talking with @/mlkinis who brought up an interesting theory of using rocks in this new arc to symbolize the reversion of materialism. The rocks, elements derived from basic nature, have vastly different virtues compared to the gems, a class of refined minerals that developed a habitual routine of upkeep socially and culturally. While gems are also made from the Earth, they are perceived as high-value and are often polished to be artificially beautiful. 

One Buddhist principle reflects on detaching oneself to worldly possessions and desires, such as wealth, in order to attain inner peace, and it seems that having these primitive rocks is a representation of Phos “letting go” of the gem society, which may be another way of showcasing that the world is returning back to life as the way it once was, and that Phos is on a path to attaining ultimate happiness. I’m wondering if Dr. Ayumu’s line, “When you cross that bridge, burn it” refers to Phos leaving their suffering behind as they’re going forth to being happy in this new world that is coming to be...

Anyway, upon reading the passage, along with meeting the sentient rocks and hearing its rock friend sing the verse, I felt like Phos reconciled with their own self and existence, and melted from feeling at peace 🥺😭!! Thank you, Ichikawa as always… This was a very cool and comforting chapter for me.

[ofduskanddreams]

a not-so-brief announcement:

I have a lot of unfinished WiPs. Having so many WiPs (entirely my fault: too many ideas + not enough time) has been a large source of anxiety for me in recent weeks, to the point where it's been difficult for me to write at all.

Logically, I know that I'm doing this for free in my free time—I am under no obligation to create other than the one I set for myself. Realistically, I often feel like I'm letting you all down when I don't post/write enough. I know it isn't true, but it often feels like my value to this fandom is measured by how much content I can contribute to it. I've only been here for a little over a year, and I still often feel like a new kid trying to prove their worth.

Thinking this way sends me down a very unproductive spiral of putting pressure on myself to write/create and feeling guilty when I can't do as much as I want (my self-imposed expectations are also too high.) Instead of being a fun creative outlet, writing fic hasn't been enjoyable recently. That saddens me.

I hate feeling this way, honestly, because I love writing, I love storytelling, I love this fandom and these characters and the community I've gained here. I want to be here and I want to be writing because I have so many ideas and I love the stories I've already told/started to tell. But I also need it to be fun for me.

My list of WiPs, combined with all of my tangled feelings about writing, currently have me feeling like Sisyphus standing at the bottom of the hill trying and failing to catch a glimpse of the top around the massive boulder in front of him. I don't know how to find the joy that I've lost, but I do know that taking some of the pressure off of myself is a good place to start. This brings me to the reason I started writing this post.

The modern AU fic I started writing for Elucien Week has, in that classic turn of events, turned out to be far more extensive of a story than I intended. I estimate a total of 7-8 thick chapters. I have 10k words already written but that's only the first 1.25 chapters.

For the sake of my mental health, I will not be posting what I've written so far tomorrow as I originally had planned. I just can't deal with another WiP hanging over my head right now, I'm sorry.

I'm also going to give myself a break from writing/posting writing for the next few weeks because I think that my being burnt out is likely a major contributor to why writing fic hasn't been fun. I'll still be around, don't worry. Hopefully, this break will give me time to catch up on reading everyone else's fics.

Wow, it turns out I really needed to get that off my chest. I know this was long, thank you for listening <3

[georgiapeach30513]

Closer to Heaven and Closer to You, Part 9

Summary:  Ransom falls in love

Pairings:  Ransom Drysdale X Reader

Rating:  mature

Warnings:  language, mentions of sex, 18+ ONLY

Word Count:  5.8K

Previous

Series Masterlist

*dividers created by @firefly-graphics​

Harlan wakes from his hospital bed to see you lean over on Ransom fast asleep.  While Ransom had been asleep as well, now he was making shapes on the back of your hand that was in his using his thumb.  Soft motions to keep you as cozy and comfortable as possible.  Ransom’s blue eyes move all around your face as he takes you in.  You two were supposed to be watching Harlan, but he was now watching you.

You seem at peace, and ease, even as you lean over on Ransom.  But his grandson was absorbing something he hadn’t felt much of in his life, love.  Ransom was content, but more than that, so much more.  He was falling head over heels in love with a woman.  One who didn’t pursue him, one who hadn’t slept with him after the first meeting, one he hadn’t grown tired of.  

He was treating you like some precious stone.  His hand holding yours gently, while his arm around your shoulders were keeping you warm, and simultaneously bringing you even closer to him and his heart.  The both of you were fools for trying to deny this.  This, that was much more than just physical attraction.  Ransom valued you, and your opinions.  He cherished you, and randomly brought you up in conversation.

Harlan had doubted that Ransom even knew what he was feeling.  Love was a foreign feeling to his grandson.  He assumed he would be confused or repulsed by the emotion, but Ransom was surprisingly embracing it, craving it, and continuing to nurture it.  Ransom didn’t want to wake you, because he didn’t want this moment to end.  

Ransom didn’t even know he had the power to make these moments happen all the time.  He just knew that you were becoming a delicate flower he wanted to protect, and he wanted to bask in your presence.  “Ransom?”

“Shh, please, don’t wake her,” he says, barely audible.

“You two need to go on home.”

“If I wake her,” Ransom’s words get lost in his throat as you snuggle more into his warmth.  You hadn’t had a sleep this good in so long, and your body is refusing to let you wake.

“Son, you don’t have to lose these moments.”

“She deserves so much more than me,” he chokes out.  Looking up at his grandfather he sighs.  He didn’t want to lose you, and also didn’t believe he was worthy enough.

“And you deserve so much more than you allow yourself.  Don’t let them win.”

“Them?”

“Your parents.  Not all marriages are like that.  I wanted more for my daughter, still do.  Her bitterness from her loveless marriage has spilled out onto you, and you don’t deserve that.  I had a beautiful marriage.  One where I adored your grandmother, and would have done anything for her.  Ransom, don’t push her away because you’re scared,” Ransom shakes his head slightly, unsure of how to respond.

“You are scared, because you feel something real.  It’s right there in front of you, and isn’t a fairytale.  She enjoys time with you, and not your money.  She talks with you, and doesn’t ignore you.  She’s stood up against your parents for you, refusing to see your flaws that they are too quick to bring up.  That woman adores you.  Don’t push her away.  Now, go fetch my hospital nurse.  I’m ready to go home, and I’m sure Bunny is more than capable, considering Nurse Pricks-A-Lot burst a vein.”

“Yes, sir,” he takes a final look at you, before sliding you off his shoulder.  Smiling down at you when your eyes stir, and you begin to yawn, sitting up, and immediately look at Ransom with a soft smile.  “The boss is demanding that it’s time to go home.”

“Well, we better get him home then,” home.  Taking Harlan home.  The two of you.  It sounded good, and even better coming off your lips.  “Go on, I’ll see that no one comes in stabbing at his arm again,” you weren’t upset that you had been on Ransom’s arm asleep.  Didn’t even give it a second thought.  Ransom wasn’t sure if it was because you were comfortable enough or because you wanted to be there.  He also didn’t care as long as you were comfortable.

“Get me out of this bed, and help me get dressed.  Grab my shoes, please.”

“Harlan, you have to be discharged first,” Harlan could be one of the most stubborn people.  When he made up his mind to do something, it would be done.

“No, I want out of here.  I can’t fathom having another nurse besides you.  They were horrible.”

“They were fine,” he shows you the deep bruising on his arm, and sure you are lying, but you wouldn’t admit to it while you were in the hospital.  You were too attached to Harlan, and watching them not treat him with the same care you would hurt your heart.  “Fine, they left a lot to be desired, but you still have to be discharged.”

“I want you to stay at the estate.”

“Nope, I have an apartment that is perfectly fine.  It helps me separate work and home,” this has always been your philosophy.  You wanted your home to be your safe space.  

“I want you to move closer to the estate then.  There’s apartments a few miles from me.”

“And those apartments are significantly above my price range.”

“Let me pay the difference,” you shake your head no.  Harlan was persistent and normally got what he was wanting, but you were not going to be some kept woman.  You agreed to a wage, and that was that.  “Then I’m giving you a raise.  I want you closer.”

“No.”

“Fine, I have a small house at the edge of my property.  No one has lived there in years.  It needs work.  It’s quite small.  But it’ll have everything that you need, and even bring you closer.  It’s about the size of your apartment.”

“The small house that sits beside Ransom’s?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“Why do you need me closer?  And is it closer to you or closer to Ransom?”

“I want you closer because I’m scared I’ll collapse again.”

“I’ll make sure that you get enough water.  Dehydration is going to kill you someday.”

“Bunny, I want you closer because you’re alone in this city.  You leave me and sit in a shitty apartment alone, and eat your microwave food that is too high in sodium, and it’s nasty.  Please say yes.  Let me give you more of a social life,” Harlan’s family isn’t what you would call the best of friends.  But Harlan, himself, was such an interesting man.  “How do you know where Ransom lives?”

“When I took you to the Museum of Fine Arts you made a decision to point over to a house, and said, that’s where Ransom lives.  And then pointed at that little house, and said, ‘I own that.  It needs work, but it would be better than a dusty apartment’,” Harlan gives you a little chuckle.  He wasn’t subtle.  “How much work are we talking about?”

“A good clean out.  Really good.  It’s terrible. Was a bit of storage.  But everything works.  I believe.  Come to think of it, you could just live…”

“No.  Fine.  I clean out this house, then what?”

“You don’t have dinner alone.  You enjoy conversation, and you become more than just, Bunny, my nurse.  You become someone that my granddaughter can look up to.  Or someone that my grandson would pay attention to.”

“Quit bringing up Ransom,” it wasn’t that Ransom was bad.  Ransom was good.  Too good, but you didn’t need a man, and you weren’t looking.

“I was referring to the other grandson, Jacob.  He’s the little shit that can’t keep his eyes off his phone.  He lacks social skills of any kind.”

“Wow, he sounds amazing.  I’m glad you told me about him.”

“Plus, I think it’s time for my family to meet the woman that has been taking care of me.  The woman that both me and my grandson enjoy spending time with,” you dramatically roll your eyes at him, grabbing up his clothes for the departure he was determined was right now, “You better stop that.  Deny it all you want, but you and Ransom enjoy time together.”

“Me and Ransom enjoy you.”

“Uh huh,” Harlan gives you a grin, slinging his feet over his bed, “That’s why you two had continued a conversation outside, while I had walked in, and you didn’t even notice.”

“You…you were…you snuck away.”

“Yes, I snuck.  And you and he were giggling.  Ransom Drysdale giggled, and you made that happen.  I was a burden and wasn’t adding to the conversation, I saw myself out for you.”

“Get dressed, before I call you an old man.”

“You better watch your mouth, Bunny.”

“What did she say to you, Harlan,” he wasn’t gone long, but you did miss his face.  No.  You can not get involved.  You are working.  He is the grandson of your employer, and you have sworn off men.  You can not miss him.  He was hardly even gone.  

“That she was going to call me an old man.”

“Well, you are.  I did give her permission to call you that when I wasn’t around.  It is my name for you after all.”

“I didn’t ask for permission though, Drysdale.”

“No, you didn’t,” his eyes roam up and down your body, and you have to turn away.  If he was closer to you, Ransom would feel the heat radiating off your cheeks, and even your chest.  This could not happen.  You can not be openly flirting with Ransom, and not in front of Harlan.  But it flowed, and was natural.  And you liked it.  You liked it too much.

“What does that even mean?” Linda asks, taking a drink of her wine as her eyes stare down the table at you.  You wish you hadn't agreed to dinner with the family.  Even if it was only Linda, Richard, Ransom, and Harlan.  Instead of the many annoying conversations there could be, there was only the one, and Linda had caught what you and Harlan had said.  

“What does that mean?  You’re going back to Montana?”

“It means I’m going home to Montana?”

“We don’t pay you to fly back home.”

“I’m not taking a check, but you don’t pay me anyways,” Linda’s tongue clicks in her mouth, and Harlan gives you a sly smile, while Ransom obviously, accidentally kicks at your foot.  Obviously it was on accident.  “It’s not permanent.  It’s Thanksgiving.”

“My father’s health doesn’t change for the holidays.”

“And Harlan said that I could go.  Again, Linda, with all due respect, you don’t sign my check, Harlan does.  I work for him.  I ask him for time off.  If he needed me, I would stay.  I’m going home to Montana for a week, and I’ll be back by the following Monday.  It’s not that complicated.”

“What’s in Montana anyways, Bunny,” Richard enunciates his words carefully, and you’re not sure what to make of it.  You didn’t even like either of them, and didn’t understand where Ransom could have even come from.  He was nothing like his creepy father or bitchy mother.

“My family.”

“If you enjoyed your family so much why would you move all the way to Boston and land in a relationship with a very wealthy family.  I know you’re the reason that Harlan’s will was changed, you vicious little…” Harlan’s fist slams on the table, and you lift your napkin to lay it down.  You could tell when you weren’t wanted.

“Now that is enough.  She is my guest, and you will treat her with respect,” Linda begins opening her mouth as you stand, “No, you will not utter another word.  She asked for that week off to visit, and I am the one who told her that it was an excellent idea.  That is enough.  Bunny.  Bunny?”

“I’m sorry.  If you’ll excuse me,” you can’t even look at any of them.  You just want to get out of there.  You needed air, and to be away from them.  Walking into one of the sitting rooms, you slump down on a couch.

“Ransom,” lifting your head up, you see Greatnana Wanetta looking at you, pointing.  “Ransom is happy.”

“Wanetta, I thought you had gone to bed.  Do you need help?”

“Ransom.”

“He’s having dinner.  Would you like me to push you in there?” Shaking her head, and motioning you with an arthritic finger to come towards her, you stand, going to her side.  “What is it, Wanetta?”

“Ransom is happy,” she gives you a smile, tapping at your leg.  “I like you.”

“Crazy old woman,” your body stiffens, hearing that slimy voice.  You hated him.  “Wanetta, let the help wheel you to your room.  That’s all she’s good for.  Well,” he snickers, eyeing you up and down.  “Has he actually gotten to taste you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Play coy.  All his girls do.  And trust me, there’s many.  It’s best you not give into him, he’ll only disappoint you.  It’s all he’s good at.”

“It’s you that’s the disappointment.  Wanetta, let's get you to bed,” wheeling her out, and away from Richard, you force yourself not to cry.  It wasn’t Richard’s words.  It was the fact that Richard and Linda hated you.  You had never done anything, and they despised the ground you walked on.  

“Ransom is happy,” Wanetta looks up at you as you open the door to her room, “Because of you.”

“No, he’s not,” she still gives you that sweet smile.  A look that was telling you that she knew something you didn’t know.  “I know he isn’t what Richard and Linda believe him to be.  He’s a good man.  He’s smart, kind to people who deserve it, he’s talented with writing, and yes, he is handsome.  He just…”

“Because of you,” her old body crawls into her bed, reaching out her hand to tap you on your nose.  “There aren’t many.  There’s you.”

“Go to sleep.  I’ll see you sometime tomorrow,” that was of little comfort.  But a tiny bit.  There weren't many girls like Richard liked to often assume.  “Goodnight,” you whisper, closing the door.  Walking towards the side exit of the house, and through the kitchen, but instead find Ransom leaning up against a counter.

“You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, were you?”

“It didn’t seem like I was wanted.”

“After dad came back, he and mom left,” a silence settles between you and Ransom, and you try not to smile.  There was a warmth that radiated off him, and you want to move closer to him to feel it.  You were positive other people did not feel it, but you certainly did.  “I don’t…I don’t want you to leave for the week, but I’m also worried that you’re going to leave and not want to come back.”

“Why would you say that?”

“My family has been less than welcoming to you.”

“You and Harlan haven’t.  I’ll be back in a week.”

“What if I asked you not to go?”

His hand is twitching at his side, and you’re unsure why.  It was a long evening of trying to play nice with people that were the biggest assholes you had ever met.  “Why would you ask me not to visit my family?  Ran, it’s Thanksgiving.  I need to be with my family.”

“You’re the only one that gets to call me that.  I’m sorry about my family.”

“Don’t be.  I know you’re not like them.”

“Please, don’t go.”

“Why?  You haven’t given me a reason why.  I want to go.  I miss them.  I came here to get away, but I left behind so many good things, and most of it was my family.  I needed to come out here for me to learn about me, and to…I ran.  I ran a\way from my current situation.  It was shitty, and I don’t regret coming in here.  But why do I need to stay?”

“I don’t want you to leave me,” you gulp, and he steps closer to you.  Close enough for you to smell his warm, sweet, and still smoky scent that had weaved itself into his cable knit sweater.  A scent that you had been craving since it had lingered on your clothes from the hospital, and it was dizzying.  What was he saying?  “Please, don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“No, you don’t.  You can stay with me, and Harlan.”

“I don’t want to stay here during Thanksgiving,” oh, that pouty face was back.  Why did that face make you want to drop to your knees and beg him for forgiveness?  “And what I mean by that is it’s a family holiday.  I should be with my family and not a job.”

“But,” one more step, and he’s right in front of you, reaching out a hand to touch your forearm, and you go weak in the knees.  “I don’t want you to leave me.”

“What do you mean by saying that?”

“It’s nothing,” he shakes his head, stepping back away from you, and holds out his hand to the door.  “I mean nothing.  You should be with your family.”

“Ran?”

“No, you don’t want to be here with my family.  The others are just as bad as my parents, and if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be here either.”

“You could always — always come to Montana with me?”

“Yeah?” There was that genuine smile.  The one that makes his dimple appear, and his eyes light up.

“Yeah.  Just think about it, okay?” He responds with an okay, and you start to walk towards the door.  Looking back at him one last time.  You weren’t falling.  He was just a friend, and was a good man.  That was it.

“Bunny!” You stop immediately, turning to look at him.  “Would you want to have dinner with me sometime?”

“We just had dinner.”

“No, I mean, just you and me.  Like out.  Together.  For dinner.”

“Like a date?” A smile creeps up on your face, and it was completely against your will.  Your body was overtaking your emotions that you were supposed to be in control of.  But what you do feel is lighter than air.  You hope he doesn’t dance around the question and that he answers you sincerely, because if he doesn’t you’re not sure how you can respond with a yes.  

“Yes,” thank goodness he was honest.  “A date.  Me pick you up.”

“I could walk over there.”

“No.  I can pick you up, and we can go to this really great place called…”

“Longhorn,” Ransom’s mouth turns up in a confused snarl.  “Trust me.  I know you were going to say some Michelin star restaurant.  But I want you to be in my element.  I’m always in yours.  Not everything has to be extravagant and fancy.  It can just be fun.”

“What’s at Longhorn?”

“Steak, chicken, shrimp, a little bit of everything.  And it can be my treat.”

“But I asked you.”

“Fine.  It can be your treat.  Goodnight, Ran.”

“Goodnight, Bunny,” he watches you retreat from the house, walking in the direction of your new home with the biggest grin on his face.  You had said yes.  He had built it up in his head that he didn’t deserve you, and that you would never agree to this.  But you did, and you were happy about it.  Your eyes were gleaming, and you even turn back around for a final gaze at him, and the prettiest smile he had ever seen.

“Ransom, I know you’re new to this son, but it’s cold, and dark,” Harlan peeks his curious little head into the kitchen.  His grandson was beaming from ear to ear.  “Offer to drive her home.”

“Oh, right.  Yes.  Drive her home.”

“And don’t linger.  You go home as well.”

“Yes, okay.  Right.  Don’t overwhelm her.  Don’t make her feel she has to entertain me.  Take her home, and…”

“Go,” Harlan giggles at his grandson.  Pointing out the door to see you use your phone as a flashlight.  “She’s waiting.  Or at least walk with her.  Bid her farewell and let her know you’ll pick her up tomorrow at six.”

“Yes.  Okay,” Harlan loves seeing Ransom at this moment.  He was acting like a child.  Ransom had convinced himself that you would never agree to go out with him, and now you did, and he felt like a little boy.  It was absolutely adorable.  Ransom was falling in love.

You are beautiful.  Ransom had never seen anyone as stunning as you.  He can’t even take his eyes off you.  Hated the drive to the restaurant because he had to keep his eyes on the road instead of you.  But you had turned your body towards him.  You kept your eyes on him, and a nervous hand close to him.  You smiled the whole way to the restaurant, and you are still smiling now.

Watching his every move as he glanced over the menu.  You smiled the entire time.  While he is enjoying sitting across from you, he hates that the table was keeping you too far away from him.  It was overwhelming for him to constantly hear of your life with a good family.  A family that encouraged you, and praised you and your sisters.  But they did a fantastic job of raising you.  They made it near impossible for Ransom not to fall for you.

“How’s the steak?” The giggles.  The way your hand constantly moves from the table to the side of your face, and back to your plate.  It was noisy in the restaurant, but at the same time Ransom felt like there was this bubble keeping the two of you separate from everyone else.

“It’s not bad,” he has the prettiest smile.  You had never seen him smile at anyone like this.  Hadn’t noticed his dimples before you and him had stayed with Harlan the entire time he was in hospital.  He was handsome the moment he walked into your life, but there was this beauty that you feared nobody saw but you.

“How often do you come here?”

“Here, here?” You give him a shrug, and he probes you again.  “I haven’t actually been to this one.  There’s one, not in my hometown, but close enough.  I’d go all the time with friends.”

“Dates?”

“No.  This is my first date to a Longhorn.”

“Why…how — I mean, what brought you to Boston?”

“Well,” you lay down your fork, and take a deep drink.  You aren’t sure how much information you want to divulge to Ransom.  The first date is not the best time to talk about an ex, much less an ex fiancé.  “I ran.”

“From what?” His hand reaches across the table, taking yours in his own, “I won’t judge.  I’ve made mistakes in my past, too.”

“Have you ever been engaged?”

“I’ve never even been in love.”

“I don’t think I have either,” it was shameful.  Yours and Frank’s relationship was volatile, and you aren’t exactly sure how to explain it.  It was like a tornado.  Rushing into your life, and rearranging everything.  And by the time the storm settled you were left with pieces of yourself.  You had finally felt whole and put back together being in Boston, but also so lonely.

“I don’t know if I understand.”

“The proposal was comical, and pretty sure he was doing it as a distraction.  I was in the relationship, and he was in love with something else.”

“Was she a brunette?  Or a redhead?  Maybe blonde.”

“I said something.  I was never going to come first, and I let him get away with so much.  Lost myself in the process.  Lost what it was that I wanted because he wanted to make those decisions for me.  I was always the bad guy, and he was always this great good guy.  Yeah, well, he left to go to his first and only true love, and I told him if he did, that I was gone.  He went anyway, so here I am.”

“How long ago?” Licking his lips, he tries to avoid that pouting face that you were growing so fond of.  

“Well, I’ve been in Boston nearly a year.  I left that day.  Packed up what I had, and was gone.”

“You love Montana,” it wasn’t a question, but you respond with a head nod.  “I’m not going to ask you to stay for Thanksgiving.  But it’s going to be miserable without you here.  It always is.  They’re…I don’t know.”

“They hate me.”

“No, they fear you.  They see the care you give Harlan, not wanting anything in return.  You stayed at the hospital, and didn’t get a paycheck because you weren’t working.  But you didn’t care.  You wanted to make sure Harlan was okay.  They care about his money, his properties, and what he can give them.  They fear you because you have a relationship,” you know where this was going.  Right to that pesky will that Richard and Linda always brought up.

“That will was in the process of being changed before you got here.  But it was revised since you’ve been his nurse as well.  Harlan is getting tired of people waiting for him to die.”

“He’s healthy for his age, and honestly doesn’t need me there everyday.”

“You think he wants a nurse to make sure his health is okay?  No, he wants a companion.  Sometimes I leave and do research for him.  And he’s left with his toxic children.  Nobody comes to visit him on the regular.”

“That’s sad.  They don’t even know what they’re missing.  With you either.  Ransom, you’re a good man,” snorting, he shakes his head.  His hand tries to slip out of yours, but you cling to it without thinking.  Your body is tired of you not leaning into Ransom’s obvious need for touch, you wanted him, and he was starving for you.  “You are.  Harlan thinks so, too.  Harlan’s job is studying human behavior, and he sees this great potential in you.  He adores you.  He’s not the only one.”

“Bunny, I…I don’t know how to date.  I don’t know what love is, and…”

“Neither do I.  But who said that dating equals love?  You start off as casual, and find your way to love or…well, let’s start from the first date.  I enjoy spending time with you.  Not just in Harlan’s study.  I enjoy this, and I would like to do it again.  Go on, look at the bill,” you point at the book that woman had casually dropped off, reading the table and knowing you needed to continue this moment.

“This is a joke right?” You giggle again, and Ransom wants to make you giggle all the time.  Every day.  “We should get dessert.  This isn’t right.”

“It is.  What did you think it was going to be?”

“Normally, this is the price of appetizers and drinks.  No, half an appetizer and one drink.  You’re a cheap date.  I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I enjoyed the food, so I didn’t take offense.  I also don’t really want tonight to end.  But I’m not inviting you to my place to have sex either.  I’m drawing my boundaries.  I don’t want sex right now,” heaven knows that your heart was in your pussy.  You can admit where you went wrong in the relationship with Frank as well.  You were all in the moment he was inside of you.  

“I love that idea.”

Ransom loves it a lot.  A woman that can be upfront and honest.  And if he was being honest, sex too soon made him get bored.  That’s all he wanted after the first time, and he never learns anything about his partners.  Soon they become nothing more than a late night booty call before he doesn't call at all.  You wanted him to wait, but continue on with the conversation.  He liked that a lot.

“Uh,” gasping, you sit up in the bed quickly when an arm goes around your waist.

“What?” Ransom sits up just as fast, looking around the room, already getting in protective mode.  Thinking that something had tried to hurt you.  “What’s wrong?”

“You’re…I thought someone was trying to grab me.  Did we fall asleep talking?”

“Something like that,” he groans looking over to the clock.  “It’s four in the morning.  It had to have been around two when we fell asleep.  I remember looking at the clock at 1:30.  I haven’t slept this good in ages.”

“Me neither.”

“Well, honey Bunny, why don’t you lay back down, and know that it is my arm that’s around your waist.  Only if you want to.  If you don’t, I can head home.”

“We should put something more comfortable on though, right?  Like…would you be offended if I wore…”

“Is this where you ask to wear my sweater, and I sleep in my underwear?” The giggles return, and you nod your head.  Ransom was sure that this was for the movies because it had never happened before.  “Here,” he says, taking his sweater off, and you have to look away. You weren’t expecting all that under the sweaters.  Thick veiny arms, and tits that made you envious.  “I had laser hair removal.”

“I don’t care,” you giggle, twirling your finger, motioning him to turn around.  “Don’t look,” this time a pillow gets tossed to his face, and you quickly pull your own sweater off, trading it for his.  His scent was glorious.  Mysterious and rich, and still had the sweet warmth to it.  You thought it smelled good on him, but you weren’t prepared for the smell to wrap around you like a blanket.  

Standing up, you let your skirt hit the floor, and you pull down the covers, “Underneath them, Ran.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, getting up, and taking off his own jeans.  Sweet lord.  Eyes on his beautiful face.  Eyes up.  Don’t look.  His boxer briefs were begging you to look, and you did a few times.  “I can put the pants back on,” he smirks as his knee hits the mattress.  There was the Drysdale cockiness that he was known for.

“Nope.  No, that would not be comfortable.  I have a pair of sweatpants, but they were his.”

“Do you think I’m too good to wear another man’s pants?”

“It’s just…”

“I’m the one that’s going to get to cuddle you all night long.  I’m not too worried about some ex you had to fly across the country to get away from.  And seeing how I am very tempting for you like this, it might be best for me to wear them, lest we break your rule.  Bunny, you broke up for a reason.”

“Right,” you did break up for a reason.  But Ransom being confident enough to not care that those sweatpants once belonged to Frank was attractive.  It was fucking hot is what it was.  Ransom was the one that was in your bed, and he knew it.  He wasn’t threatened by Frank or your past.  “Let me get them.”

“We can snuggle right?”

“I’d prefer that.”

“Good.  It really has been a long time since I slept that soundly.”

“Me, too.”

“Ransom,” Wanetta lifts a hand up, cupping her favorite grandson’s cheek, smiling at him.  He was so handsome, and reminded her of her husband.  He was a good boy.  “You’re in love.”

“Yeah,” months of dating had taught Ransom not to be shy about his feelings with people that wouldn’t use it against him.  “I’m so in love with her.”

“She loves you.”

“I want to marry her,” his eyes glisten as he watches Greatnana.  He wanted to find someone that he would spend the rest of his life with.  And he did.  “No, I’m gonna marry her.  I can’t keep her here though.”

“Nope.  She loves her home.”

“And she is my home.”

“The mountain air will be good for Harlan,” Wanetta coughs, pointing a tired and withered hand over to her bedside table, “I’ve not got long.  But that is for you.”

“How come you only talk to me and Bunny?”

“It’s for you,” she points again, and he slowly opens the drawer, pulling out a ring box.  He slowly lifts the lid, gawking at the antique engagement ring that once belonged to the woman laying in the bed before him.  “Take her away from here.  Take my son.  Give her the world.”

“We can’t leave you.”

“I don’t have much time left.  This place isn’t good for her, or your relationship.  Make a home in Montana.  You both deserve that.  It’ll be a new adventure for my son.”

“I’m not planning on asking her anytime soon.”

“No, but you will ask eventually.  You’ll know when the time is right.  Just keep that ring safe until then.  It’ll look beautiful on her finger.  Tell Harlan he has my blessing to leave when I’m gone.  Give her the world.  Give her you.”

“You think way too highly of me.  Thank you.  She’ll love this,” Wanetta cups Ransom’s cheek again.  She would never see her favorite person married, but she knew in her heart that you made him so happy.  You made perfect sense.  You had changed him.  Even if his parents wanted to argue that fact.  Ransom allowed himself to become the man he was always meant to be.

“You are her world, Ransom.”

Ransom fights back the tears.  He still didn’t feel he deserved you, but he didn’t want to give you a chance to realize it.  He didn’t want to leave you.  He wanted you forever.  It might not have been love at first sight, but it was an attraction that grew to respect.  

“Build a big house in Montana and have a ranch.  Out there you won’t have them ready to criticize you.”

“I don’t know how to run a ranch.”

“But he does.  That Bucky.  The only one she talks to back home who isn’t family.  Hire Bucky to set it up for you.  A home where you and she can raise your children.  They’ll have a charmed life living in the middle of nowhere.  You’ll hear their giggles as they run through the pasture,” it sounded like heaven.  He knew if he wanted to keep you he had to take you away from here.  

You described Montana as heaven.  But his heaven was being close to you.  If Montana was what you needed, it was what he would give you.  If a cowboy was what you desired, well, he would try to be that cowboy to take you away from here and closer to heaven.  

He had to get in touch with Bucky.  He had to get land bought, a house built, talk to Harlan, and right now, he wanted to find his girlfriend, and remind you how much he loved you.  Love.  Ransom had found it, and he wasn’t going to let anything take that away from him.  He would do whatever you needed from him, and being away from his family sounded like a heaven all of its own.  

“Ransom, remember,” Wanetta taps on her own nose, watching her grandson try and figure out his plan.  “You are her world.”

“And she’s my heaven.”

Next

Masterlist

Taglist: @tis-thedamn-season​ @marveloustaylortot​ @pono-pura-vida​ @sstan-hoe​ @softsatnin​ @missusbarnes-rogers​ @peaches1958​ @seitmai​ @smile1318​ @andydrysdalerogers​ @cjand10​ @patzammit​ @lavender-annd-lilac​ @midnightramyeoncraving 

[trilobiter]

After reading into this story, I think that it's worth saying that the situation is a bit more complicated than it has been portrayed, or as the headline suggests. A human being, Jason M. Allen, used an AI program called Midjourney to create a work of visual art to his specifications, a process that he says took him over eighty hours. He entered the finished result into a contest and won first place.

I'm not an expert on art, but like many people I have a very strong relationship with it. Much of my thinking on art has been influenced by the common mythology around art and its role in modern society, a mythology which expresses the values we place on art. As I value art, I can't help having opinions on this - but since I'm not a visual artist, I'm not qualified to speak to the way this will impact those people economically. I am not optimistic on that front, but I won't get into it too much.

I think creative people of all types are right to be apprehensive about AI, because it seems that there is no reason, in principle, to suppose that it won't upend their livelihood in some way. Jason Allen says he was an active participant and creative controller of the process that resulted in his winning artwork, but as the technology improves it will be used to generate content in an increasingly automated way. I say "content" because what we're talking about is a kind of capitalist production of art-as-commodity.

If an AI program can generate an image that can win an art prize, then it can compose and record a number one pop song, write a best-selling novel, or direct an award-winning film. And I believe that when these things happen, the public will mostly accept it, because as odd as it sounds, it's not that different from what we've been trained to accept as culture. Pop music, popular books, and popular films have all been created in assembly-line fashion for over a hundred years, in a corporate structure aimed at maximizing returns from a market. Most people don't care that much about the ghostwriter of a bestseller, or the technical crew named in the end credits of a blockbuster. When AI gifts us with a bop, most people will shrug their shoulders, say "it's a bop," and dance.

A lot of people believe, intuitively, that making art should be difficult. AI makes art a lot easier, but in that sense, so does modern industrially produced paint, which comes in a variety of colors that Michelangelo could only dream of. We lionize the Renaissance masters because of what they achieved with simpler tools, though I haven't heard many people suggest that painters today limit themselves to whatever colors and techniques were available in 15th century Italy. Still, there's an inherent tension between possible through innovation, and what is thereby lost.

Like most things, issues like this make me think of Star Trek. Specifically, I think of Data from The Next Generation. Data is an android character with markedly android mannerisms, and is a futuristic depiction of what can only be called AI, who nonetheless is presented to the audience as a person with an interior life that is equally valid to a human being's. When Starfleet Command wants to compulsorily reassign and disassemble him, the show explicitly compares this to human slavery. We are meant to evaluate Data's character as we would a human crew member, and not as we would a typical piece of the show's futuristic technology.

Data wants to be seen as human, and he does human things like making art. He is shown to practice several creative arts throughout the show's run, including poetry, comedy, music, acting, and painting. He studies these arts, and attempts to replicate them, struggling along the way to find his own creative voice. His early attempts often seem to bear out the claim that, not being human, he cannot produce anything that is both original and genuinely moving. As time passes, however, this is no longer clearly the case. Attentive viewers will note that Data grows into an artist who does create with an original voice, even if that voice is characteristically like an android - in other words, characteristically like Data.

Optimistically, we may be looking at a future where an AI personality not unlike Data will create works of art that will move us all. But it is important to remember that Data is not just an AI, he is a person - and not simply because he is portrayed by a human actor. We as viewers can accept Data's legitimacy as an artist because the show takes pains to reinforce his legitimacy as a person. But Midjourney is not a person. It lacks anything like the interiority that defines Data as a person in our eyes. Midjourney is not learning how to paint so that it can become a real boy.

What Jason Allen did probably qualifies as art, and Midjourney can probably be seen as analogous to a brush or any traditional artist's tool. A tool like this could, conceivably, help artists achieve breakthroughs of the same magnitude as the discovery of perspective, or the conceptual leaps of modernism. But put that tool into the hands of people who aren't artists - say, the hands of a CEO who wants to cut costs on the latest product of the content assembly line - and I'm afraid I have to say that the result will only cheapen the art. It could be visually indistinguishable from the most beautiful human artwork I have ever seen, and it won't be worth remembering. It will have value only as a commodity.

When I think of some of my favorite works of art, music, or writing, I reflect on how what makes them my favorite is not simply that I appreciate the shape of a line, the resonance of a harmony, or the word order of a sentence. What makes the experience of engaging with these things meaningful to me is not just that they exist, but that they represent the attempt of a real human being, just like me, to communicate with other human beings just like me. What use is art without artistry?

The joy that makes art worthwhile, even art that was produced for commercial purpose, is the knowledge that it wasn't just produced for commercial purposes. It's not enough that the thing was made because the maker believed some one would buy it, but that they felt in their own soul that they could reach that person in a way that had nothing to do with money. If I can't believe that about an artwork, then I can't care about it the same way as the works I truly love. It has to be more than something to consume, at the cheapest prices available.

I don't think it can be denied that AI will change our relationship with media, or challenge some core assumptions we have about creativity. The real question is, what are human beings (and the truly sentient AI of the future) going to do about "art?"

[dawnofplumeria]

Nakime's past marriage HCs

CW: The following content contains mentions of Child abuse, domestic abuse & sexual abuse

(The above image is my final design for Daisuke, Nakime's late husband)

Before Itsuki dies, he gave Nakime a nice kimono intended for her to grow into as an adult. He hopes that Nakime would get to wear that kimono whenever she performs. Nakime promises to Itsuki that she'll become a rich biwa player one day.

Nakime's mentor, Itsuki, died at 74 while she was 14. A few months after she turned 15, her father got into conflict with a co-worker & lost his job as a result. For a while, her family struggled with finances due to lack of available jobs.

One day, Hiraku ran into his old friend, Aizen during a job hunt. Unfortunately, Aizen has no available job positions for Hiraku. However, he proposed a different deal to help out Hiraku & his family.

Aizen's only child, Daisuke (27) has not yet found a wife. Aizen proposed a deal that he'll financially help out in exchange for their children to marry each other. Hiraku accepted the deal out of desperation.

When Hiraku broke the news to his family that night, Tsubame was relieved that they wouldn't be struggling anymore. However, Nakime thought otherwise & in fact voiced disapproval. An argument broke out between Nakime and her parents. The argument ended with Nakime being slapped by Hiraku with Tsubame unfazed as her reaction. Nakime only went along with the arranged marriage in hopes to not be disowned.

Just a few days after Nakime becomes 16, she marries Daisuke (28). She moved into his home in a neighboring village. Both Daisuke & Nakime don't want to marry each other mainly due to incompatible personalities. However, they went through with it mainly because of family pressure.

Daisuke is an entitled man who needs to have everything be his way or the high way. He's a standoffish individual who values convenience over comfort of others. He's extremely vocal with complaints, but yet is too cowardly to actually make changes that he wants. He only befriends & makes connections to others if they can benefit him to himself or his family business. Despite believing that he's immune to all manipulation tactics, he ended up being easily persuaded into gambling. Although he has competent assistance to his father, he's been noted by employees to be difficult to communicate with. He only agreed to marry Nakime due to not wanting to become homeless & the black sheep.

For the first two years of their marriage, Nakime and Daisuke were mostly tolerant of each other. They do occasionally argue and bicker, but usually try to stay out of each other's way. Daisuke helps his father run his textile business while Nakime is a homemaker. They eat dinner in silence. They sleep in separate futons. In order to create children, they tried to do the deed to seven times before giving up due to unsuccessful attempts.

One day, a competing textile business popped up in the village. Due to failure to innovate, Daisuke's family quickly went out of business. As a result, Daisuke & Nakime became poor. Daisuke couldn't fathom having to learn a new skill. He became desperate to get money for his wife and himself as quickly as possible. Nakime decided to do biwa performances in order to help out her husband and herself. While Daisuke was drinking at a bar, he got persuaded by a stranger to try gambling. For a while, he was immensely lucky. However, he eventually suffered a massive financial loss from a failed gamble. Daisuke initially got into gambling only as a quick way to earn a lot of money for Nakime & himself. Eventually, he only became interested in the thrill and risk of gambling.

Nakime & Daisuke's marriage went from bad to worse. Daisuke quickly developed a gambling habit & kept gambling away almost all of Nakime's earnings every time she gains any. This usually instigates fights between them. Sometimes Daisuke would hit Nakime out of anger. The neighbors and their respective in-laws are aware of their dysfunctional marriage, but find it more convenient to not intervene.

Daisuke got tired of feeling frustrated from constant gambling losses. In his sick, twisted mind, he decided to try forcing himself onto Nakime as a way to get some sort of control and relief in his life. He successfully felt the dopamine hit the first time he violated Nakime. As a result, he does this occasionally as a vile "stress relief" method for himself.

The first and only time Nakime confronted Daisuke on what he did to her, she ended up being nearly strangled to death by him. She went to her parents to tell them what Daisuke did to her. Instead of receiving comfort and compassion, her parents reacted without any care. In fact, they told Nakime that her husband is allowed to do whatever he wants with her. After that, Nakime never spoke to her parents again.

As a trauma response, she numbs her mind whenever Daisuke forces himself onto her. She forces herself to always feel indifferent about it after each violation session.

One night, Nakime finally got her big break to be scheduled to perform for a large crowd. However, she couldn't find the nice kimono that she usually wore whenever she performs.

She asked Daisuke if he has seen her only nice kimono & her heart sunk upon his nonchalant response. Daisuke gambled away one of her only remaining gifts from Itsuki.

The next set of actions Nakime as a response to what Daisuke did is as followed by canon.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

See, here is where we're at re 'is Nisha Lawful Evil'

Out of these three, Nisha is most definitely closest to the second Type. She's definitely not "Lawful over Evil". I'd say even Jack is closer to that. Jack is the one who has lofty ideas about creating a better world, purging Pandora of bandits and creating is capitalist utopia. When Nisha talks about the Hyperion agenda in Borderlands 2, it is mostly in a slightly amused way. And while she supports it by guarding the Eridium shipments, she's not directly an enforcer for Jack the way Wilhelm is. Mostly she just wants to run Lynchwood - which she also isn't really trying all that hard to turn it into a "peaceful", hyper-controlled place, she even states as much:

"Rumours that Lynchwood might become as civilised as Opportunity are not to be believed. Let Jack have his ivory towers. I came to Pandora for action."

So she's not really trying to build any kind of society - she's trying to create a scenario where she can commit atrocities unbothered (and realised that the best profession to do that is to be a cop lmao). The only aspect that fits here is that she specifically likes to go after bandits. Or, anyone she considers a bandit. But we also know from TPS that she's perfectly fine with a) killing pretty much anyone or anything else and b) being considered a bandit herself. And I think it's important to point out that in the society we encounter in Borderlands, killing and hunting bandits for fun and sport or whatever is perfectly normalised - obviously, self-defence is another big reason - but if you have power, money or are just really good with a gun, you're actively encouraged to go out and murder as many bandits as you like and the more you kill, the bigger the hero you are. And Nisha, much like Jack, is perfectly content to label people bandits the moment they piss her off or inconvenience her if she has a chip on her shoulder.

She's also not really the Type 3. Something that does apply, at least occasionally, is the idea of 'honour' - like the fact that she challenges the Vault Hunters for a duel. But we also see her go back on her word when she feels like it, like in the Pre-Sequel when that one Lost Legion soldier asks for his life to be spared: All the other characters let him go, except Nisha. She first says 'yes', then decides to hunt him down and strangle him when he least expects it. Yes, she creates a set of laws in Lynchwood that allow her to hang anyone she feels like - but somehow I doubt that if someone not breaking any of her laws would stop her from killing them if she felt like it.

Also, she isn't evil until she clocks out, then goes home and acts like a different person. She's always Like This. Yes, she can be friendly and jovial and chill when she feels like it, but a) her cruelty and blood-thirst usually show, she's just funny about it and b) it's not like she's disconnecting from the evil she does or rationalises it. She simply doesn't care. The reason she can be cordial and polite or even close with people despite of all the murders isn't because there is a distinction between those two sides of her - but because there isn't: She's pretty open about who she is. She doesn't normalise it, she doesn't think 'oh, I'm following orders / it is my job to do this' or 'other people are doing it too' - she didn't slip into this line of 'work', she doesn't really have any values or beliefs bigger than herself (sure, she supports Hyperion but she's also announcing the fact that she considers it all a bit silly over the loudspeakers to the entire town of Lynchwood).

The closest thing to apply is "Evil over Lawful" - creating Lynchwood and creating the laws of Lynchwood is mostly a set-up to allow her to do things 'for the Evulz' - luring people to Lynchwood to torment them is basically her mouse-trap for endless fun.

But if we look at -

Chaotic Evil - some of these ironically fit her a lot more.

And ironically even here, I wouldn't put her into "Evil over Chaos". Now, this might be controversial because being 'evil' is a very, very big aspect of Nisha's character. In fact, she arguably might be more evil than Jack (she arguably might be the most evil character in the Borderlands-universe)(even if they're both extremely cruel people, Jack's motives are also ambition, revenge, arrogance, his idea of bringing 'peace', etc. Nisha's sadism is a lot more undiluted. She really, really just wants to hurt people. This, ironically, also makes her kill fewer people than Jack - because Jack is that 'million is a statistic' kind of villain, even if he genuinely enjoys killing. He has a mission. Nisha doesn't. Sitting in a space station and sending soldiers and moonshots to kill her enemies just wouldn't be enough to keep her entertained. We see that in her lines at Wilhelm:

"That's lame. I like my kills more personal." "An unmanned drone? Can't even watch them die that way!" "Boring!"

She doesn't care about Pandora or the Warrior or Hyperion - she cares about hanging around Lynchwood, killing bandits like they're ants and she's got a magnifying glass. And the fact that she's also perfectly fine with Pandora potentially being fried to a crisp if Jack manages to raise the Warrior indicates that she's also fine going somewhere else, if Lynchwood doesn't work out. But...she's also not really a card-carrying villain. She wouldn't ally with someone just because they're evil if that meant that they would ask her to do stuff she doesn't feel like doing - we see that in her interactions with Tassiter. So yeah, for her it seems to be Chaos (freedom) over Evil.

And since she likes to use her freedom to hunt bandits and for her western larping shtick - the whole Sheriff thing seems to be a pretty sweet deal for her interests. Not because she care about the law, but because she cares about fun and impunity.

And that's how you end up being so Chaotic, you're turning Lawful again.

(She also definitely has traits of 'Intelligent Monster' - she really, really likes killing people/beings just to prove she can (which is a common trait among Vault Hunters but it is also what makes Nisha become a Vault Hunter.))

[navree]

What is your take on the relationship between Aegon I and his brother Orys Baratheon? How do you think it will be portrayed in the Conquest show? If Orys was half Targaryen, could he have claimed a dragon?

I don't necessarily know how it'll be portrayed in the Conquest show just cuz I haven't seen any information about it yet (ideally HBO will just give me the contract and it'll be whatever I want it to be, come on fellas) but in terms of my take, you know me, I have Thoughts because I love these characters too much.

As with everything about Aegon, this is a lot of conjecture because that man was giving us straight up nothing in terms of his thoughts and feelings, but despite what seems to be a lack of interest in their relationship from most people, it's clear that Orys was important to Aegon. It's likely that Aegon was just searching for a pretext to start war when he offered Orys for Argella's hand after he refused her, but he still cared enough about Orys and valued him enough that he thought that he should get to marry a full princess and have the potential to be a king, as well as valuing his life and safety enough that he was willing to pay an insane ransom just to get him back alive during his captivity in the First Dornish War. It's also clear that Aegon cared in the fact that he created the position of Hand. The Hand of the King is not something that existed before Aegon's attempt at unification, and while yes it does make sense to have some sort of advisor/grand vizier type of person, it's almost unheard of in the ASOIAF world to have a second in command with this much power and influence. The Hand is an incredibly significant position, second only to the king (and during Aegon's reign, the queen, since Visenya and Rhaenys were also administrators and essentially co-monarchs with Aegon, even though he was still at the top and the most powerful), and that is something Aegon came up with and bestowed on Orys because he wanted that to be Orys. That speaks to an insane amount of not just confidence in Orys as a person, but also trust. Considering how reserved Aegon was and how small he kept his circle, the fact that he trusted Orys as much as he did with such responsibility and power, even if it could come back to bite him should Orys have chosen to be a traitor, really speaks to the amount of value and affection he must have had.

I don't think it's one sided affection either. Most people who are given that amount of power and position likely would have tried to make the most of it, even try and supplant the person who gave it to them, and it's notable when that doesn't happen (why do you think Augustus and Agrippa and the way Agrippa never even tried to wrest power for himself even though he absolutely could have make me a bit crazy?). Yeah, Orys might have lost any eventual power grab, just based on the fact that Aegon had Balerion, but it would have severely weakened Aegon's position and probably led to the collapse of the Targaryens as a dynasty and rulers of a unified Seven Kingdoms. But Orys was perfectly contented to serve as Aegon's second fiddle, to go into battle for him and even die for him, to marry who he was asked to marry and rule where he was asked to do and even speak in Aegon's voice rather than his own. He was not only able to do it, but willing to do it, happy to do it even. And maybe some of it can be chalked up to familial obligation, but Orys was not publicly a member of that family. He wasn't ever formally claimed by Aerion, so even if they were raised as siblings, he wouldn't benefit as much from a Targaryen ascension the way Rhaenys and Visenya would (and of course, unlike Rhaenys and Visenya, he wasn't intrinsically tied to Aegon through marriage nor would his children have a vested interest in Aegon's vision working out the way their's would, seeing as they would also be Aegon's children). Orys wasn't motivated by family loyalty or his own personal ambitions or even lofty dreams about a unified world/protection against a greater threat the way the three Conquerors were, he was motivated by what looks like personal loyalty towards Aegon specifically. He was Aegon's before he was the realm's, even before he was House Targaryen's, and he was clearly willing to do whatever needed to be done for Aegon's sake. And not just in the Conquest, but even afterwards in other skirmishes. He didn't necessarily need to be leading armies in Dorne, now that he was the head of a Great House as well as the second most important man in the country (I don't think Jon Arryn or Otto Hightower were fighting on any frontlines while they were Hand) but he did it anyway. It's almost Rhaenys-like, in a fashion, the way that he was willing to put his own life on the line for the vision Aegon believed in, because he believed in it too (though, like I've said several times, Rhaenys had her own motivations for fighting in the Conquest and in Dorne beyond just what her husband wanted) even when he had a perfectly legitimate excuse not to, even though it ended up costing him dearly. And he never blamed Aegon for what happened to him, even though he was clearly embittered and became a crabby nightmare of a man in the aftermath who wasn't necessarily one for seeing things clearly (cut off Deria's hand? really? come on dude) and that's generally a recipe for heaping blame on the undeserving. But there's no record to suggest that Orys was ever angry at Aegon, or ever tried to remove himself from Aegon's life beyond resigning as Hand, or that they had any kind of falling out, that despite everything he was feeling, he never turned his emotions around on Aegon, as if the love he bore Aegon was too great to ever consider blaming him for Orys's misfortunes.

I also like the fact that Orys is actually younger than Aegon. The closest anyone gets to a date is the idea that he might have been born in 20 BC, which would make him seven years younger than his brother, which is actually a pretty significant age gap in terms of childhood development. And yet, they're frequently referred to as childhood companions. In spite of the age gap, Aegon took the time to spend time with Orys, to hang out with him, to engage with him and make the effort in their relationship. And that's not a small thing, because Aegon was probably only used to being around children roughly his own age. He doesn't seem to have had a lot of companions as a boy, and when it comes to his sisters, he was two years younger than Visenya and one to two years older than Rhaenys, which is much closer developmentally than an age gap of seven years. But despite not necessarily being accustomed to interacting with someone that much younger than him, he still tried his hardest, and idk there's something that tugs at the heart to imagine little Aegon, probably a quiet and unobtrusive kid, putting in that amount of attention and care into trying to bond with a baby, a toddler, a little kid even as he was growing well beyond that phase. It's easy to see why Orys would latch onto Aegon as a child, he latched onto his cool older brother, but Aegon was putting in the effort too, enough so that by the time that they were in similar developmental areas they were true friends and companions and so incredibly willing to die for each other. And even if that gap adds an element of sadness to the fact that they both died in 37 AC (Orys just a bit after Aegon I think, considering the Vulture King stuff happened during Aenys's reign) with Orys only being in his late fifties, there's something to the fact that Orys didn't really ever live much of a life without Aegon, that he loved him too much for it, and that Aegon deliberately cultivated that relationship not as an adult looking for an ally, but as a kid who wanted a companion, who loved Orys too and was willing to put in real work to show that almost from day one.

It's also possible that their relationship suffered in their later years. Once again, it all goes back to that most consequential of moments, the First Dornish War. Orys's mutilation happens before Rhaenys is shot down over Hellholt, so he was already a bitter asshole by the time that happened, but it doesn't seem like he tried to move himself out of his own mental funk when it happened either. So Aegon's dealing with grief from the loss of his wife/baby sister, probably even some guilt over not protecting her better, as well as some increasing panic and stress over the problems Aenys, his three year old son and only child, was developing as a result, and who could he go to? Visenya? Visenya was grieving too, and we don't know if their relationship was ever functional enough for Aegon to be any kind of emotionally open with her (I like to think it was, but that's a headcanon from me). Orys? Ideally yeah, you go to your best friend, your stalwart shield, your strong right hand, your brother, when you're hurting and scared and in pain and in need of comfort, but it's entirely possible that Orys was either a bad comfort or had already entrenched himself so deeply in his bitterness that Aegon didn't even look to him as an option for help. After all, Orys had deprived him of a necessary councilor during active wartime, and was more focused on his own issues than anything else, so maybe Aegon just felt that he couldn't rely on him in his most desperate time. That's a huge backslide in trust from what they were in the Conquest, and possibly irrecoverable. I don't think it was as bad or as permanent as the issues that ended up arising between Aegon and Visenya, since, like I said before, there isn't any record of a public falling out or anyone remarking on Orys's lack of influence, and he was at court regularly enough to be included in the group of people who had opinions on how to deal with the Dornish peacemaking delegation. I don't think that Orys did anything unforgivable or something like that, I think that Aegon just decided not to rely on him the way they were both used to, and it created a distance between them exacerbated by what appears to be a natural tendency from Aegon to shut himself off from most people he's not extraordinarily close to.

Man Aegon should have stayed well out of fucking Dorne, is there literally any interpersonal relationship of his other than, idk, the one with Balerion, that escaped even remotely unscathed from that godforsaken war? Christ alive.

Could Orys have claimed a dragon? It's possible. The dragons likely would have accepted him, considering they also accepted half Targaryen children like Velaryons who intermarried and Rhaenys TQWNW, who was herself half-Baratheon, and the Strongs and Alicent's children, both of whom only had half-Targaryen ancestry themselves. Would he have been allowed to, as a bastard? That's harder to say. It doesn't seem like bastardy held the same taint for the Targaryens that it did for the other nobles in Westeros, but it might have still been a Thing enough that, while they were children, Aerion wasn't going to allow a bastard to lay claim to a Targaryen dragon. We know even less about Aerion than we do about Aegon, including when exactly he was supposed to die, so while we know that Aegon might have been inclined to go against his wishes (considering that he brought Rhaenys into his marriage despite what were clear plans to have him only be married to Visenya), we don't know if his moments of rebellion, like the marriage to Rhaenys, happened during Aerion's lifetime or not. So it's entirely possible that Orys was prevented from participating in any dragon culture stuff in his youth, perhaps in spite of a younger Aegon's protestations, and that by the time Aerion was out of the picture, they're all adults and Orys had already decided that he didn't necessarily need or want a dragon when he was a capable fighter in his own right.

TL;DR I think they really loved each other, that Aegon valued Orys incredibly highly and that Orys in return deeply cared for Aegon, and that even if the relationship could have possibly suffered in the aftermath of the accursed First Dornish War, it wasn't anything irreversible and that the love was always there, and it was clearly appreciated and worked towards on both sides. I think Orys could have claimed a dragon if he wanted, but either never saw the need or might have been blocked from doing so by their father, potentially in spite of Aegon trying to make a case for him. And also I love them both very much.

[blimpixels]

To counter your argument of there being "too much piracy" as you stated on twitter, if it wasn't for piracy there would be so much media out there that'd lost forever. I'm surprised you feel that way about this especially these days as we witness multi-billionaire companies nuke different media off the face of the earth that wouldn't survive if it wasn't for piracy. A lot of cultural contributions and their value would be lost forever. To use an example of the library of alexandria, Eratosthenes' most important work Geographika would not have survived at all if it was not for the fact that Strabo preserved many fragments of his work through quotations. While this isn't necessarily the same as piracy, the core concept is still the same. We are witnessing attempts at eradicating third spaces and what they offer for free to their users such as libraries, for example through censorship and defunding. Piracy is becoming more relevant and even more important than ever before, specifically because of the rot capitalism forces on society. I can understand why you might feel that there's too much piracy going around, but please consider why that might be and the importance of preserving culture and the cultural items that come with it.

“so you hate waffles?”

This isn’t countering an argument I made, it’s making up an argument I made because you have worms in your brain and you can’t read the word “piracy” without going on a tirade about digital preservation when they aren’t actually the same thing, despite the overlap.

Maybe ask me about the context of my tweets before going on anon and sending me essays about shit I also already talk about. I could’ve been talking about anything.

Obviously I know and care about digital and physical media preservation, I tweeted that literally coming home from the library yesterday. But that’s not the same as piracy.

Maybe I was talking about how hundreds of artists and SWs personal subscription sites are being regularly stolen and consistently updated and the creators can do nothing about it short of shutting down their patreons and OFs. Obviously it sucks that people even have to have middlemen like this to be financially supported online but people stealing their content isn’t preservation, it’s theft.

As a creator it pisses me off when cumbrained, porn addicted consumers feel entitled to people’s creative and sexual labor. Even when it’s only $5 a month to actually support them.

You should’ve asked me what originally prompted my tweet. I was in a comic book store yesterday and I felt guilt after seeing how full some of the shelves were and seeing books that I’ve read online for free that I could’ve bought and supported the creators with. I try to buy physical media when I can because I hate how streaming services and gaming companies have a disgusting amount of needless control over the content they just so happen to “own”. I’ve talked about this before.

But then of course you’d retort “but most of that money doesn’t go to the creators, it goes to people on top” and I’d say “so what?” I’m not talking about who fully gets the money (though it’s very important), I’m talking about people taking from modern media producers without giving anything back. It’s an unfair exchange. Even if comics were 100% owned by the people creating and printing the books, piracy would still be just as big. Because it’s not about “preservation” for most people, it’s about getting content for free.

Being anticapitalist doesn’t mean not compensating people for their work.

Of course, opinions are nuanced and that tweet wasn’t. But it’s a tweet. They aren’t nuanced. It was barely a sentence. So next time hop off anon and own your words like an actual human being. This isn’t even everything I want to say about piracy and media preservation but I have stuff to do today.

I’m glad you’re passionate about this. It’s important. I actually agree with you on most of the things you said. But also shut the fuck up.

[queerfox-tales]

(Lost) Grasp on Reality Moment

So yesterday, I finished a book that had me a little out of it afterwards. I struggled to tell what was real and what wasn't. Nothing super special about the book. This happens to me when I finish a story I got super into. It happened a few times with movies but usually, it's a book.

Anyway, so my being confused on what's real vs fiction reminded me of questioning recent thoughts and things happening to me this past year since working on connecting to nature and my inner energy. And my society would definitely deem me to have lost touch with reality. But then I started thinking about the society and the world most of us live in. It made me laugh that that's supposed to be "having a good grasp of reality".

We majorally live in world run by power and greed. And not just by those on top. Everyone (mostly anyway) is scrambling to get their own power over people and collect as much as possible of whatever society tells them has "true proper value". Mostly, what people really want is to be happy/content, respected/loved. Yet every day, every single day, people choose power and greed. They literally choose misery and don't even know it. Power and greed can't co-exist in the same space as being truly happy and receiving basic respect/love from all those around you. And this is "having a good grasp of reality" according to many societies. Thinking that it makes sense to live by power and greed. To choose misery every day instead of making the slightest change to bring you closer to being happy. To living a better life. Truly better and for all. Because the way we live affects us all. We're all connected whether we like it or not. Especially within a society.

If you think of it, it's ridiculous. It's not logical. It's not practical. It's definitely not a survival thing cuz we're killing ourselves with this lifestyle and mentality. It goes against everything natural yet it's supposed to be not just the current reality but the one and only reality. "The real world". As if we didn't create this. As if we can't undo it if we bothered to accept, truly accept, that even the small steps count. Cuz they do. The small steps count for so much. And we could slowly work society to a point where we remove power and greed. Where we can be happy, respected/loved and for many places, also have enough resources (cuz I acknowledge that some regions don't have enough and can't afford it. But some very much do and choose, well, the power and greed lifestyle).

Alas, people only change in superficial ways. They stop blaming one group only to take power from another and call it progress. People want to be heard and respected but refuse to listen and respect. They're confused when they don't get what they want when they follow a system that is literally meant to hold them down. How is this reality? If anything should count as delusions and absurd ideas, it's the way most people live. It's the world people have created. If anything should be losing grasp on reality, it should be thinking that the world we live in can even exist. Cuz why would people choose misery if they want to be happy? For how many thousands of years can people actually believe that if they focus on power and greed, all their dreams will come true even when what they truly want literally conflicts with their lifestyle? A lot apparently. A lot of thousands of years. cuz look at us. We're still going with it. Still living the same as the acknowledged ancient civilisations. Long live power and greed cuz misery loves company.

[teaveetamer]

Ok so this is my thoughts on FNAF. I feel like FNAF started a whole era of "mystery baiting" type storytelling in video games. Where the important thing about the mystery is not the answer, or even the lore itself. The value in it is getting fans to talk about your game, hunt through every facet of it, and try to "figure out" the mystery themselves.

Now to be clear, I'm sure FNAF wasn't the first game or series to do this. However, I think it was the first time a game, and an indie game at that, not only did it with some success, but took off into a cultural phenomenon. In 2012 or 2013 I couldn't even imagine being able to walk into any GameStop and straight up buy merch for some indie game I'd played/seen, and by 2015 there were people walking around my high school just casually rocking Fredbear hoodies and keychains. Nowadays we're even at the point where there's basically an entire Horror Genre that's basically "make some wacky, recognizable characters and hope your game gets picked up by a big YouTuber so you can get a merch deal out of it." And a lot of those games use the FNAF formula of mystery baiting in the hopes that they'll entice people to talk about them.

We all love a good unsolved mystery. And it's free advertising for your game! Naturally people will see others talking about the lore and the mystery and they'll say "hey, this sounds neat, lemme find out more".

But it's also bad from a story writing perspective because you eventually run into a few problems.

#1) You need to keep the mystery going so people will keep talking about it, which leads to a massive bloat of meaningless content as you produce things just to drop "nuggets" for people to follow. I think later FNAF games really fall into this trap, where they just keep adding and adding and adding to the lore and now everything either conflicts or there's no human alive not named MatPat who can keep track of all of it.

I think Hello Neighbor also did this (granted I never got super deep into this one). But I remember when that game came out in like pre-alpha and there was some mystery, and people lost their minds trying to figure it out, and so the developers kept adding and adding and adding with every build to try to keep the hype going and then... nothing. It got so dumb and convoluted that people just stopped paying attention and most people don't even know the game came out AND has like four sequels at this point.

2) You never intended to answer the mystery, and you never do, which pisses people off. Unlike real life unsolved mysteries, we know that video game narratives are constructed by someone who knows all of the answers and they could tell us if they wanted, they just won't.

3) You have to answer the mystery, and trust me the answer is never going to live up to the expectation. It's a similar sentiment to people who are disappointed when the conclusion to a beloved game series is fumbled. You spend all of this time with the game playing it, searching for evidence, theorizing, talking with your friends, watching youtube videos, hunting for leads... and then it's not what you expected. The amount of backlash you'll get for an unsatisfying resolution is usually proportional to the amount of time you spend stringing the mystery out.

I think the Fodlan games carry a lot of that same energy. Again, the devs touted it as a plus that they were creating a game where many things were going to be left ambigious/unresolved/up to interpretation/off screen because it would make the world feel "bigger" and "more alive". They specifically say they intentionally left things out in routes because they wanted players to play a route and then go talk to each other online to try and "figure out" the mysteries of the other routes.

And I think this is a failure of writing for three reasons.

#1) They needed to keep producing content to keep the mystery going, which led to a massive bloat of meaningless content created as an excuse to keep the mystery going so players would have breadcrumbs to follow.

2) There are some mysteries they apparently just never intended to answer. The Shez/Ashe support in Hopes is a prime example of this. The exact origins of Arval is one as well, and TWSITD's whole deal was left mostly unaddressed. Sothis is also a mystery left hanging, as she never regains her memories or anything. This is frustrating to players, because we know devs exist who have the answers and they are just choosing not to tell us, because reasons.

This is also a double edged sword for them, because unlike FNAF which can continue going in perpetuity, constantly giving players new breadcrumbs and bite sized pieces of lore to satisfy them juuust enough, FE is a series that is frequently one-and-done. Which means you have players arguing the same points cyclically, and with no new information ever added to clarify or give further clues. This leads to even more frustration and burnout with the IP.

3) The mysteries they did answer, the answers often did not live up to expectation. Either in the execution (plot dumps, mostly), or in the actual answer. Frequently because the answer is "idk, mole people did it" with no further elaboration, and the mole people themselves are an underdeveloped mystery so you've just answered a mystery with another mystery.

That's not to say you can't have mystery or intrigue, but I don't know. To me the Fodlan games feel like they were intentionally constructed to mystery bait a fandom into promoting their game for them

Now, do I think 3H was influenced directly by FNAF? It's... difficult to say. I know in the West we tend to look at Japanese developers as this isolated island, but of course they look at what's working in other parts of the world. The most recent Story of Seasons game was noticeably influenced by the success of Stardew Valley, for example. FNAF's influence also didn't just stop in the west. It was a big phenomenon in many parts of the world.

Of course FNAF and FE are completely different genres, unlike Stardew and SoS, but it's not completely unbelievable that someone looked at FNAF, or stories that copied FNAF's formula and found some success, and said "ooh, mysteries! People seem to like those. Add some of this into the next game!" When one game does something successfully then the industry tends to chase it.

[kimtaegis]

✨ GET TO KNOW YOUR CONTENT CREATORS ✨ Tell us about your creative vision! details you are proud of, but nobody noticed? The Best Feedback?? want to gush about a personal favorite or yours??? nows the time!

okay first off, sorry for only answering now! honestly, I didn't really know how to reply to this for quite some time, but I think I'm just gonna take this chance to talk a bit about a favourite of mine from this year so far, which is yoongi's 2022 bday post! I'm very proud of how it turned out and put quite some thought into it. So here we go:

Let's start with the general idea; Yoongi's "interludes" all have a special place in my heart. I relate to some of the lyrics on a very emotional level (especially those of Set me Free) and I also just really think they're amazing musically, Interlude: Shadow is my favourite Yoongi (bts album) solo song, for instance. He just puts a whole lot of feelings into his interludes especially I feel, and since this is something I value extremely in Yoongi, I thought it'd be a good idea to create a little something for them specifically for his birthday.

Okay, now a deeper dive into each panel!

I just had the need to make an introductory panel, it would have felt too abrupt to just jump into the songs. I'm so happy with how it turned out, like.. the build up, the literal introduction to him as an artist?? The way every picture is Yoongi but labeled as different "parts" of him, and then his two "artist personas" merge together as Min Yoongi in the third one, cause yeah. It's all him. The last rectangle is a little reference to Interlude Shadow, both with the lyrics and the scribbles which were used in the mv. The lyrics just fit perfectly into this whole layout idea.

Interlude Dream Reality: Since the track doesn't have any actual lyrics, I only had the overall emotion that I felt while listening to it. I thought that mirrors are a nice way to depict reality vs. dream so I went with that. I added some blur for extra distortion/ metaphorical blurred lines between the two. With the text at the bottom, I basically wanted to portray "finding reality in it all"

SUGA's Interlude: Beautiful lyrics which I wanted to illustrate with sun and stars/ day and night elements (the GQ/ Vogue shots really were in my favour haha). I kind of pride myself with including movement in my gfx lmao, I don't know, I don't see it often and I just think it adds something special to them (although it makes things MUCH harder, too). Editing the colours to make them match throughout the whole edit was A Task, especially the yellow here in this one; the orignal picture of course did not have that kind of shade from the start. Small things like that can take up to 30 minutes to adjust.

Interlude: Shadow: I think it's my favourite. Like... the thought I put in this? *pat on the shoulder* The shadows behind him both being made out of himself but also functioning as a crowd, this and the scribbles being parallels to the mv. The shadows creeping up on him step by step and eventually consuming him, making them stand out while he's barely visible anymore. Also the way the lyrics are literally depicted in the animation... The shadows do get darker while the light (his fame) gets brighter, damn. Highlighting the "shadow" in the lyrics with that light, yellow colour for the ✨ contradiction of it all ✨. Oh yeah, that's a good one.

Set me Free: Phew, that song... hits different for me because it summarises how I've felt with my depression a lot. The visuals of the panel don't really reference the lyrics, but rather my personal relation with the song, hence.... mental illness. This kind of consuming darkness that sometimes seems to swallow you whole, that moment when you feel nothing, or not like yourself, where you don't want to be there. That's those seconds where you can't see him at all in the gifs. The photo on the right, black and white, looking kind of...lost, in thought, maybe sad or tired. His facial expressions and posture in this panel just feel very fitting (again, shoutout to that photoshoot). Also...that feeling of days just going by? The moving lights in the gifs could resemble time just passing by while you (seem to) stand still.

That's it! That was a rollercoaster to write and I wanna thank you for giving me the opportunity to gush about it, it made me love it even more. <3

[kookies2000]

I have to say I literally cannot wait for your PiBTLW fic to come out !!

Aw, thank you! Sorry for the wait. I wanted to finish it last month, but I got summoned for Jury Duty. And anyone who knows that experience, it's a nightmare and time consuming. I should say, though, I always update a new story, but I update the first three chapters just to see how it does. As in, if enough people get interested, I continue. If not, I delete it. I have deleted some stories before, only a few that no one misses. And I know no one misses them because no one has asked me about my Sonic and Mario cross over I deleted years ago or my Ice Age one. Or my Amphibia one. But, I noticed a few people interested in the surface of my Last Wish fic, so maybe it will do good?

Just a treat, here's four OCs, Kitty and Puss kids. Don't worry, I won't fill my story with OCs. I usually limit it to five or six Oc per story.

Estrella, eldest child, by two years. Intelligent, loves mechanics, and creates machines and weapons. Shy, a heart of gold, they are an intervert. They are associated with the color gold a lot, and yes, I will be using symbolism a lot. After being told about their father's adventures as a teen with his brother Humpty Dumpty, Estrella wanted to continue Humptys work, hence why they gained an interest in inventing. They want nothing more than to reach for the stars and achieve their dreams.

Solana, eldest of the tripletes. A brave heart. She always gets in trouble and is extremely reckless. She adores adventure and always tries to look for danger even at the risk of her own lives. Already lost one after drowning at an ice rink. She took the experience as thrilling and takes her multiple lives as a chance to take as many risks as she wants. She wants to be the best guard in the castle and become Far Far Aways greatest hero. She will make her mark in history just like her father, the fearless legend.

Amia, middle of the tripletes. Passionate heart filled with love for everyone. He loves music, dancing, and loves being in the spotlight. He wants all eyes on him as he performs on stage. He wants everyone to see him as great as they see his parent's. In fact, all he wants is to keep all eyes on him and convince everyone he's as grand and fearless as his parents. Just so his parents can be proud of him. The only problem is that he isn't as fearless or brave as he pretends to be.

Sombra, the youngest of the tripletes. A quiet heart, he is content with his life. He trains with his sister Solana to be in the gaurds. He is quiet, polite, and patient. Ever since he lost one of his lives at the ice rink, he vowed to value every single one of his remaining eight. Instead of being outgoing and using brute force like his sister Solana, he likes to work in the shadows and practice his stealth and thieving skills. Just like his mother.

And I will be adding other characters like Death, I'm looking forward to his scenes because horror is 100% my strength. The Tres Diablos, they are kinda difficult for me to write since mischievous characters aren't my strongest traits. I can still do it. Dulcinea, despite the fact I don't like her character, the story I wrote for her is my favorite. Mostly because it involves children and survivor's guilt. Plus, I wrote some horror for her story. BUT I'm gonna have to put a warning for her story because, let me just say, her story made me throw up from disgust and fear. And I'm the one that wrote it. Its because I based it off of the seven kids and wolf story. The YouTube short version, My Little Goat. I recommend that animated short for people who can handle the message of child abuse. Then Goldie and Baby. I cried while doing their outline. That's all I'll say.

Anyways, first chapter is still in the outline phase since I did have some inconvenience in real life. But I am working on it!!!

[ladylussh]

Gone Off The Rails Challenge*⁎⁕

Created By Lady Lussh*⁎⁕

⁂ Single Dad 7 Kids

I wanted create a single dad challenge with spice. This dad hates kids he is the worse person , he does what he has to, but not from a place of love.

Back story*⁎⁕

He hates kids because he thinks they have ruined his life, He was happily married to the love of his life, he never wanted kids, but he loved his wife so much he’d do anything for her. She desperately wanted kids so to make her happy he agreed. His 1st true love died shortly after giving birth, in a house fire, he believes the stress of the baby and lack of sleep caused her to be careless in the kitchen or she thought she’d celebrate with fireworks indoors…. so he was never the same again. it’s a very sad really. he went off the rails. He spent his nights and days getting drunk in bars and picking up women. Till he got himself in a pickle of baby mama drama.

Objective*⁎⁕

Raise 7 kids alone from birth till young adults. When your 1st child/children ages up to a toddler/s they can stay with a family member (sleep over), as the house will be too full to keep kids there while the last child and mother are there. Move the toddlers back in after you've had your last child.

Rules*⁎⁕

Lot trait, on the ley line, flirty, and your choice for last one. once you have all your kids you can change the lot traits. life span long. No youth potion allowed

No adoption

Create family members, grandparents or aunties and uncles or best friends, that live somewhere else to watch your 1st born(sleep over) while we make space in the house. if you end up with more than 7 kids because of twins you can give one back to there mum(This will make for a nice spin off for a long lost twins series). As the eldest needs to come back home.

Dads information*⁎⁕

1. Single dad gone off the rails challenge

2. Dad‘s name; is dirty harry(choose a name that fits the character optional),

3. Young adult.

4. Traits; evil,hot headed,hates kids.

5. Aspiration: super parent,

you may use custom content, cannot cheat unless it’s to move object’, reset objects, create a sim, remove money or remove a sim from household. No cheating to aid game play like cheating needs. if u need to improve needs use potions, earn it!!. (use satisfaction points) No!! youth potion allowed.

Unemployed. you may only work from home. stay at home dad. make money how u see fit. You can build your house from scratch or move into pre built house, The house must be between £20,000 +2,000 for wife. no real estate or money cheats. unless you don’t get the correct starting fund like i did.(sims issue)

6. Wife must die in mysterious house fire.

7. Must complete super parent aspiration even though he hates kids.

8. Mums to be can only move in when pregnant and leave after having kids cannot keep any money when the mums to be move in.

9. Must have 3 pregnant women living together at the same time, in the beginning stages try not to get caught cheating, (it’s no issue if you do get caught, its definitely fun to try. When the baby is born mum must leave, can use cheats to remove from house.

he can have girlfriends but no live in ladies after he has the 7 kids.

Game play

1. Start out with a wife, woohoo have a child or two…

2. Wife dies in a house fire.

3. Dad mourns, then goes off the rail. must drink every night in a bar or at home. can hire a nanny when he goes out to bar/night clubs. kids can go to day care if he needs to go out maximum 3 times a week.(gym,dates,etc.) minus £350 from funds for child care, £50 per child.

4. Try for a baby with 3 women or more women, it depends on if you have twins. kids must be as close in age as possible. accept for first child/children as they are already there.

5. Women must give him the babies then leave. fall out with all mums at some point and 2 children.

6. Age up all kids to young adults,

7. All kids must have at least one character value trait when they turn to young adult.

8. kids must complete one job to max level and there main aspiration out of the child stage. dad must see at least one kid complete these goals. (you can switch to control that child)

9. At least three toddler should complete all skills before ageing up. do more if you can manage it. it is possible to have them all complete skills.

10. One child must be a detective, doctor or scientist.

Seasons pack only create a family reunion day. air grievances should be an option

You can either

1. build as you go 2. move house 3. have pre built houses for the future.

challenge complete if you finish all of the above

challenge failed if:

1.If dad doesn’t complete his aspiration

2.kids get taken into care

3.you don’t raise them alone after last child is born.(u cant have a nanny all the time only when u need to go out)

4.Kids don’t complete aspiration and job and at least 1 toddles doesn’t complete all skills

5.You must drink every day, get a bar if its easier

6.Be mean/evil, have all mums dislike you and 2 child.>:(

7. You die to soon.

Please enjoy and let me know how it goes. thank you.